Kamala Harris joined by Lizzo at campaign event; Donald Trump rallies in Pennsylvania – live | US politics

As the US presidential election looms, the billionaire Mark Cuban has emerged as an energetic campaign surrogate for Kamala Harris. Making the case for business leaders to support the Democrat over Donald Trump, Cuban has drawn on his experience (in tech, investments, healthcare and now sports, as minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team), celebrity (as a lead “shark” for 15 seasons of ABC’s Shark Tank) and willingness to confront Trump-supporting billionaires, Elon Musk prominent among them.

The road has not been smooth. Last week, Cuban clashed with congressional progressives after criticizing Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, over her tech-sector antitrust work. That issue and others, including Cuban’s thoughts on Trump’s championing of tariffs and the perennial question of whether Cuban harbors presidential ambitions of his own, are addressed below, in emailed answers to 10 questions posed by Guardian writers and editors.

Read the full interview here:

The Undertaker said that “ElectionMania” was coming up on November 5, and the people had the choice.

The WWE star told viewers to choose wisely, as the nation depended on it. Donald Trump said that it should be an easy choice.

It’s not the first time Trump gets an endorsement from a WWE legend. Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan also endorsed Trump, and spoke at the Republican National Convention in July.

From Fox News to Call Her Daddy: how Kamala Harris turned up election heat in pivot to media blitz

First came “joy”, with some cosy but unmemorable TV sit-downs with sympathetic hosts, a Vogue cover, and a billion dollars to spend on TV ads. Then reality hit: Kamala Harris’ strategy to win over a mysterious sliver of undecided US voters was not working and she was slipping back in the polls.

So the vice president went on Fox News, part of a pitch to white working-class women, who voted for Trump more strongly in 2020 than 2016. It was a win for Fox’s news division – 7.8m viewers, or four times host Bret Baier’s nightly average – but was it a win for the Harris campaign?

Showing herself to be assertive, Harris avoided serving up a unintelligible word salad, pushed back on Baier’s line of questioning, aired some Democratic talking points, and ran down the clock until the 25-minute slot was up.

“Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership. I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington DC.”

Then the spin machine started up: according to Democrat voices, Fox News had helped Harris win November’s election. “I think she had a mission she wanted to do and maybe she wanted to have a viral moment,” Baier later said. “And I think she may have gotten that.”

But Fox’s primetime opinion hosts spent three subsequent hours eviscerating her. Donald Trump congratulated Baier “on a tough but very fair interview, one that clearly showed how totally incompetent Kamala is”.

With $15bn spent on this election cycle, the candidates are still grasping for a campaign formula that will give them an edge. Harris has evolved from being interview-shy to embracing an interview blitz. She followed other Democrats on to Fox News because that’s where, the theory goes, independent and Trump-neutral Republican voters are.

But will any of it matter? There are no guarantees that undecided or unengaged voters today will be any less undecided in two-and-a-half weeks’ time.

Read more on Harris’s media blitz here:

Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake

Hugo Lowell

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim they visited a home – could present a serious setback to Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days to an election that increasingly appears set to be determined by turnout.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns.

But leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with volunteers or campaign staff​.

America Pac denied it was experiencing that level of actual fraud in Arizona and Nevada and declined to comment on reporting for this story.

A person familiar with the America Pac operation said: “Sidekick was never expected to handle the auditing of America Pac’s door operation. The reason the Pac is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures each canvassing firm puts in place and the auditing procedures of the Pac writ large.”

Here’s more on the potentially fake door-knocks:

Kamala Harris promises full marijuana legalization – is that a gamechanger?

Kamala Harris announced on Monday that if elected president, she would fully legalize adult recreational cannabis on the federal level – the first time a presidential nominee has taken such an unambiguous stance on ending cannabis prohibition.

As part of her pledge, she said she would take steps to ensure that Black men, disproportionately incarcerated and disfranchised by the “war on drugs”, would stand to profit from the industry.

Vince Sliwoski, a partner at the cannabis law firm Harris and Sliwoski, said he “was happy to see it, because I like the messaging”, but added: “She can’t just snap her fingers and do it when she gets into office. It’s not something that can be done via executive orders.”

Griffen Thorne, also an attorney specializing in cannabis, felt the promise was “clearly political”, given the announcement came just three weeks before the election. Thorne and other experts the Guardian spoke to suspect Harris’s campaign is attempting to shore up numbers with Black voters, particularly Black men, who are currently less likely to support Harris than they were Biden, according to a New York Times poll.

“Federal marijuana legalization is a sound policy and supporting it is a smart strategy – not just with Black voters, but with Americans across the board,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation with Drug Policy Action.

“As a Black woman and the first person of color to regulate marijuana for both medical and adult use, I understand the challenges in creating legal marijuana markets that work for Black men. I also recognize the profound harms caused by federal prohibition.”

Packer added that it makes sense for Harris’s plan to include provisions that will remove barriers for Black men in cannabis and other domains.

Notably, the pledge sets Harris apart from both her opponent and her predecessor. While Trump and Biden now support some level of cannabis legalization, Harris is the first to explicitly state that ending prohibition is a priority.

During his administration, Biden made a number of promises on cannabis, including to expunge criminal records for possession convictions and get cannabis rescheduled so that it is eligible for FDA approval. The DEA has made progress on rescheduling, but it won’t go through before the election.

And Biden only expunged a small fraction of cannabis-related convictions during his administration.

“It was kind of embarrassing, because he kept up on his website all this stuff he was promising,” said Sliwoski.

Read more on Harrris’s pledge to fully legalize adult recreational cannabis:

David Smith

Could the once united Trump family be fading in this election?

In late afternoon sunshine, Eric Trump shook his fist and led chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The second son of Donald Trump told a fervent crowd: “They tried to smear us, they tried to bankrupt us, they came after us, they impeached him twice … then, guys, they tried to kill him.”

A who’s who of the Maga movement had gathered for a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, less than three months after the Republican presidential nominee survived an assassination attempt there. Trump was joined on stage by running mate JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. But if he was looking for moral support from his family, he would have to settle for Eric. His other children – and his wife – were notably absent.

The no-shows at Trump’s recent marquee event were indicative of a divided family keeping a lower profile than in past election cycles. When he took the political establishment by storm in 2016, the Trump family business was part of his brand. This time, at campaign stops where he gives disjointed and demagogic speeches, he cuts a more isolated figure.

Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, is sitting the election out while his younger daughter, Tiffany, is pregnant. His youngest son, Barron, 18, has begun his freshman year of college at New York University. Eric, executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, makes occasional appearances on the campaign trail alongside his wife, Lara, who is now co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

“I get to go to bed every single night and wake up every single morning listening about voter integrity,” Eric, 40, joked in Butler, with Lara at his side. “It’s really great. I’m really, really excited for November 6 when Lara can turn over in the morning and not talk about voter integrity.”

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, 46, has been less prominent on the campaign trail than in previous election cycles. But appearances can be deceptive. Off stage, Don Jr is more influential than ever as a political operative. He has built a loyal following in the Maga universe via his Triggered podcast on Rumble and gained powerful allies such as Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA.

Here’s more on the Trump family’s absence:

Harris is panicking over the Black male vote – but polls don’t show full picture

With the US election only 17 days away, Kamala Harris is courting one demographic with particular fervor: Black male voters.

As new polls warn that Black voters – who have consistently voted for Democratic presidential candidates,at rates of at least 80% since 1994 – may be less enthusiastic about the Democratic party, Harris has released a new slate of policies specifically aimed at Black men. Her stated plans include increasing access to the cannabis industry and educational opportunities that would expand pathways to “good-paying jobs … [regardless of] a college degree”.

But some pollsters say that panic around Black male voters is exaggerated and that such narratives ignore their historical support of Democrats. They also note that the focus on Black men elides deeper nuances about Black Republican support as well as gender differences in voting among Black people altogether.

“To say that for any reason we need to worry about Black men not supporting Harris or the Democrats is completely overblown,” said Chris Towler, founder of the Black Voter Project (BVP), a polling initiative about Black voting behavior. “I think a lot of the story around this need to regain Black voters is coming from a mainstream media narrative built around really poor polling on Black voters.”

The latest national data shows that Black men and women overwhelmingly prefer Harris for president, the largest amount of Democratic support she has from any demographic. Still, some polls suggest that such support is eroding. A recent New York Times/Siena College national poll reported that 70% of likely Black male voters support Harris (down from 85% of Black men who turned out for Biden in 2020) versus 83% of likely Black female voters. Twenty per cent of Black male voters said they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, according to the poll, a six-point increase from the percentage of those who voted for the former president in 2016.

Here’s more context:

Lizzo and Usher are just some of the prominent celebrities backing Harris against her rival, Donald Trump. Earlier this week, Lizzo revealed that she voted early for Harris, and Usher said last month that he was endorsing Harris.

This week, the campaign announced a fundraising sweepstakes to win tickets to an upcoming get-out-the-vote concert featuring “superstar musicians”.

“This one’s a real show-stopper,” read a fundraising email signed by Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz.

Other celebrities endorsing Harris include Taylor Swift, Barbra Streisand, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish and others.